RENÉ MAGRITTE L’EMPIRE DES LUMIÈRES RENÉ MAGRITTE 1. RENÉ MAGRITTE L’EMPIRE DES LUMIÈRES dickinson www.simondickinson.com 2. dickinson RENÉ MAGRITTE (1898 – 1967) PROVENANCE The Hugo Gallery, New York City, acquired from the artist on 8 Aug. 1949. L’EMPIRE DES LUMIÈRES (THE DOMINION OF LIGHT), 1949 Nelson A. Rockefeller, New York, acquired from the above on 30 March 1950. signed lower right Magritte; dated and titled verso Louise A. Boyer, New York, acquired as a gift from the above in Dec. 1950. ‘L’EMPIRE des LUMIÈRES’ 1949 Gordon Robins, New York, by descent from the above. oil on canvas Louis K. Meisel Gallery, New York, 1974. 3 1 50 x 60 cm. (19 /4 x 23 /2 in.) Private Collection, 1974. Byron Gallery, New York, by 1978. Private Collection, USA, acquired from the above in 1981. LITERATURE Statement of account from René Magritte to Alexander Iolas, Director of the Hugo Gallery, 8 Aug. 1949. Letter from René Magritte to Alexander Iolas with a statement of account dated Oct. 1949 enclosed, 2 March 1950. Letter from Alexander Iolas to René Magritte, 7 April 1950. L. Scutenaire, Magritte, exh. cat., The Hugo Gallery, New York, 1951, no. 8 (illus. back cover). R. Magritte, commentary on L’Empire des Lumières, written for a 1956 television programme, Paris, 1972, p. 118. H. Michaux, En Rêvant à Partir de Peintures Énigmatiques, Paris, 1964, pp. 593-94. M. Mariën, quoted in ‘L’Accent grave: Émission radiophonique de Christian Bussy’, Le Fait accompli, no. 19-20, Brussels, April 1969. N. Calas, ‘Pearls of Magritte’, Arts Magazine, New York, April 1972, p. 47. J. Vovelle, ‘Peintres de l’Imaginaire: Symbolistes et Surréalistes Belges’, Cahiers d’histoire de l’art contemporain: Documents II, Paris, March 1973, p. 34. D. Sylvester, et al, Rétrospective Magritte, exh. cat., Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, and Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, 1978, no. 145 (illus. on cover). D. Sylvester (ed.), S. Whitfield and M. Raeburn, René Magritte, Catalogue Raisonné: Oil Paintings, Objects and Bronzes 1949 – 1967, vol. 3, London, 1993, no. 709 (illus. p. 145). EXHIBITED Brussels, Palais des Beaux-Arts, Rétrospective Magritte, 27 Oct. – 31 Dec. 1978, no. 145; this exhibition then travelled to Paris, Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre National d’Art et de Culture Georges Pompidou, 19 Jan. – 9 April 1979. Milan, Galleria del Milione, Magritte: Il buon senso e il senso delle cose, May – June 1984, no. 11. 6. dickinson RENÉ MAGRITTE 7. “ART EVOKES THE MYSTERY WITHOUT WHICH THE WORLD INTRODUCTION WOULD NOT EXIST.” (Magritte) René Magritte’s L’Empire des lumières is one of the artist’s most enduring and recognisable images: a dimly lit nocturnal street scene, illuminated by the eerie glow of a single street lamp, under a sunlit cerulean sky populated with white clouds. By juxtaposing two paradoxical periods of time – night and day – Magritte disrupts the viewer’s expectations and presents an impossible and characteristically surreal landscape. This, the first version of L’Empire des lumières proved immediately popular, and, at the urging of his charismatic dealer in New York, Alexander Iolas, Magritte produced sixteen further oil variants and a number of gouache interpretations between 1949 and 1964. Many of these are now in major museum collections around the world. Our version, sold to the great American collector and politician Nelson A. Rockefeller shortly after its execution, represents the artist’s original idea, and served as the model for all of the subsequent iterations. Having remained in a private collection for thirty-five years, its reappearance on the market represents a unique opportunity to acquire not only a trophy for collectors of Magritte or Surrealism, but one of the greatest and most instantly identifiable icons of Modern Art. MAGRITTE AND SURREALISM IN PARIS AND BRUSSELS Surrealism originated as a literary movement sometime in the early 1920s. It was an offshoot of Dada, which emerged in 1916 as a rebellion against popular notions of artistic taste and observed social conventions. Surrealism was officially consecrated in 1924 in Paris by André Breton with hisManifeste du Surréalisme, and the original group included the writers Paul Éluard and Louis Aragon, and the author and critic Philippe Soupault (fig. 2). Their philosophy, derived from Sigmund Freud’s theories of psychology and the socialist writings of Karl Marx, was grounded in the belief in a superior state based on dreams and the unconscious. The bizarre, alien landscapes and strange juxtapositions of images found in Surrealist work across all media were celebrated as revelations of an underlying truth, and of a Fig. 1: René Magritte, c. 1965 8. dickinson RENÉ MAGRITTE 9. ‘super’ reality that rose above the quotidian nature of our lived experiences. that ‘the best title for a painting is a poetic one. In other words, a title The original collective of writers soon welcomed a number of painters compatible with the more or less lively emotion which we experience when into its circles, including Giorgio de Chirico, Max Ernst, Joan Miró, Francis looking at a painting. I imagine it requires inspiration to find this title… Picabia, Yves Tanguy and Salvador Dalí, among others, united by a shared The poetic title has nothing to teach us, it should surprise and enchant us’ philosophy rather than by a common visual or literary style. (quoted in G. Ollinger-Zinque and F. Leen, eds., René Magritte 1898 – 1967, exh. cat., Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels, 1998, p. 25). As the theories espoused by the Surrealists spread, satellite groups formed He did not believe it was the role of a title to explain or justify a painting. in other countries; among them was the Belgian group established in Brussels in 1925 (fig. 3). It was to this group that Magritte belonged, along In 1927, during a period of radical productivity, Magritte moved to Paris with a number of writers and poets including E.L.T. Mesens, Paul Nougé, with his wife Georgette, which propelled him into French Surrealist circles. Marcel Lecomte, André Souris, Camille Goemans, Paul Colinet and Marcel However he was never fully integrated into the group, largely because Mariën (author of the first monograph on Magritte). Although Nougé was Fig. 2: The Paris Surrealists, the commercially-minded artist often failed to see eye-to-eye with the nominally the group’s leader, he preferred to remain out of the spotlight, 1930 (L-R: Tristan Tzara, Paul determinedly anti-commercial Breton. For one thing, Magritte did not agree instead allowing Magritte to take centre stage. Magritte, in turn, often relied Éluard, André Breton, Jean Arp, with Breton’s view that the only essential qualities of Surrealism were its on his poet friends to nominate titles for his paintings or to annotate his Salvador Dalí, Yves Tanguy, Max message and its elements of chance and the subconscious, believing instead Ernst, René Crevel, Man Ray) drawings with playful lines of text – it became a sort of game for them. that thought and decision were vital to producing a successful work. As a In 1933, Nougé explained the process: ‘Titles play an important part in Fig. 3: The Belgian Surrealists, result, Magritte did not exhibit his work at the Galerie Surréaliste in Paris Magritte’s paintings, but it is not the part one might be tempted to imagine. 1926 (Standing, L-R: E.L.T. alongside the other members of the group, instead staging solo shows in his The title isn’t a programme to be carried out. It comes after the picture. It’s as Mesens, René Magritte, Louis native Belgium. Magritte also objected to the pessimism and darkness he saw Scutenaire, André Souris, if it were confirmation, and it often constitutes an exemplary manifestation in much of the Parisian Surrealism; in Belgium, Surrealism took on a more Paul Nougé. Sitting, L-R: of the efficacy of the image’ (P. Nougé, quoted in S. Whitfield,Magritte , exh. playful identity. From the mid-1920s onward, Magritte’s images were largely Irène Hamoir, Marthe Nougé, cat., The Hayward Gallery, London, 1992, p. 39). Magritte agreed, feeling Georgette Magritte) representative rather than abstract, rendered with a flatness and a layering of 10. dickinson RENÉ MAGRITTE 11. forms that Ernst compared to collage. Themes of anonymity and isolation dominated the Belgians’ work, leading one member to joke ‘Belgium is an absence of identity’. This break from Breton and the Paris group would only become more pronounced after Magritte’s return to Brussels in 1930. He briefly adopted a bright palette and painterly manner in 1943-44, which became known as his ‘Renoir’ or ‘Vache’ period, as a reaction against the harsh realities of life during the Nazi occupation (fig. 4). In 1946, he and several of his compatriots signed a manifesto called Le Surréalisme en Plein Soleil, which amounted to a final break with Breton. Magritte was not invited to participate in the 1947 Paris Exposition International du Surréalisme, and in a letter to the collector Pierre Andrieu dated 29 August he observed wryly: Fig. 4: R. Magritte, L’Incendie, ‘you may have noticed my exclusion from Breton’s group, it apparently 1943, oil on canvas, 54 x 65 cm, would seem that I am childish, and, what’s more, retarded’. Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, S.525 12. dickinson RENÉ MAGRITTE 13. NEW YORK CITY – THE CENTRE OF THE MODERN ART WORLD AFTER THE WAR While this fracture in the group was taking shape in Europe, other significant forces from across the ocean were at work influencing the development of Magritte’s mature style. The outbreak of the War saw the emigration of a number of enormously important artists and dealers, many of them Jewish, to seek refuge in America (fig.